In the Jehovist this skeleton of ethnographic genealogy is found covered throughout with flesh and blood.  The patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, are not mere names, but living forms, ideal prototypes of the true Israelite.  They are all peace-loving shepherds, inclined to live quietly beside their tents, anxious to steer clear of strife and clamour, in no circumstances prepared to meet force with force and oppose injustice with the sword.  Brave and manly they are not, but they are good fathers of families, a little under the dominion of their wives, who are endowed with more temper.  They serve Jehovah in essentially the same way as their descendants in historical times; religion with them does not consist of sacrifice alone, but also of an upright conversation and trustful resignation to God’s providence.  Jacob is sketched with a more realistic touch than the other two; he has a strong dash of artifice and desire of gain, qualities which do not fail to secure the ends he aims at.  He escapes from every difficulty and danger, not only safely but with profit:  Jehovah helps him, but above all he helps himself, without showing, as we should judge, any great scruple in his choice of means.  The stories about him do not pretend to be moral, the feeling they betray is in fact that of undissembled joy in all the successful artifices and tricks of the patriarchal rogue.  Of the subordinate figures Esau is drawn with some liking for him, then Laban, and the weak-kneed saint, Lot.  Ishmael is drawn as the prototype of the Bedouin, as a wild ass of a man, whose hand is against every man, and every man’s hand against him.

It is remarkable that the heroes of Israelite legend show so little taste for war, and in this point they seem to be scarcely a true reflection of the character of the Israelites as known from their history.  Yet it is not difficult to understand that a people which found itself incessantly driven into war, not only dreamed of an eternal peace in the future, but also embodied the wishes of its heart in these peaceful forms of the golden age in the past.  We have also to consider that the peaceful shepherd life of the patriarchs is necessary to the idyllic form in which the early history of the people is cast; only peoples or tribes can make war, not single men. 1 This also must serve to explain why

******************************************* 1.  This consideration is certainly less decisive than the foregoing one.  Jacob is a peaceful shepherd, not only because of the idyllic form of the narrative, but in his own being and character.  He forms the strongest contrast to his brother Esau, who in spite of the idyllic form is a man of war.  Such exceptions as Genesis xiv. and xlviii.’22 (chapter xxxiv.) only prove the rule. *******************************************

the historical self-consciousness of the nation finds so little expression in the personal character of the patriarchs.  It makes vent for itself only in the inserted prophecies of the future; in these we trace that national pride which was the fruit of the exploits of David, yet always in a glorified form, rising to religious exaltation.